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Comment Re: Sometimes weird problems DO have solutions (Score 1) 443

There is not an unstated assumption. Itâ(TM)s stated that the husband asked everyone else (including his wife) how many hands they shook, and all of them gave a different answer. He didnâ(TM)t ask HIMSELF.

Since one cannot shake hands with oneself, and it is stated that nobody shook hands with their own spouse, the maximum number of handshakes is 8. The minimum is obviously 0, meaning that there are 9 possible handshake amounts, but 10 people. So the husband must have had the same number of handshakes as at least somebody in the room.

If you map it out youâ(TM)ll find only one stable configuration where 9 people all have different numbers of handshakes, and in that configuration there is one couple where both members have the same number. That couple must include the husband who posed the question...

Comment Re:Sometimes weird problems DO have solutions (Score 1) 443

You're saying that your wife is able to shake hands with 8 people, but somebody else in the group has to have shaken 0 hands. The only way to shake 8 hands is to shake hands with everybody except yourself and your spouse, so there would be no way for anybody else in the room to have shaken 0.

Unless I am misunderstanding your solution?

Comment Sometimes weird problems DO have solutions (Score 1) 443

This reminds me of the married couple handshake problem-

"My wife and I recently attended a party at which there were four other married couples. Various handshakes took place. No one shook hands with oneself, nor with one's spouse, and no one shook hands with the same person more than once. After all the handshakes were over, I asked each person, including my wife, how many hands he (or she) had shaken. To my surprise each gave a different answer. How many hands did my wife shake?"

There is a nice elegant solution to this one but it SEEMS like it shouldn't be possible to answer./P

Comment Re: Solution. (Score 0) 270

Correct. Not near airports, and not in certain other restricted areas. Almost all of New York City is both restricted, and near airports, so flying drones is heavily restricted. There are certain designated areas in some parks, but if you see somebody flying a drone in NYC they're probably doing so illegally. Of note, NYC also bans all the various little electrically-propelled gadgets like hoverboards, segways, certain types of e-bikes.. So basically all delivery drivers break the law constantly every day. NYC is weird.

Comment Re:Yes, let's tax the poor (Score 1) 619

If the majority of the cost of goods in a store or restaurant goes towards the shipping costs of getting those goods delivered... then they need a new business model. If shipping costs are 5% or a business' expenditures, and those costs go up by 3%, then you're talking about a 0.15% increase in expenditures. The 5% number is a random guess, I hope most businesses manage to spend more of their money on their products, employees, rent, utilities, insurance, advertising, etc.

Comment Re:Good! (Score 4, Insightful) 619

I think a tax on gasoline is far easier to implement than a tax on mileage, and makes a lot of sense. The government wants to give incentive to high mileage vehicles and electric vehicles, so unless you have a different rate category for the mileage tax it would effectively punish them. Also, the amount of wear caused by a vehicle is proportional to its weight, so to be fair you'd need to put a higher mileage tax on heavy vehicles... That's already basically accounted for with a gasoline tax, since the heavy vehicles necessarily use more fuel, and at least for now you won't find too many EV/Hybrid semi trucks out on the road.
I'm not necessarily opposed to having some sort of tax based on usage (based on odometer readings I suppose, which would require all states to adopt annual inspections) but I think the tax on gasoline is a necessity as well. I guess I'm the opposite of the person you were responding to. :)

Comment Re:That was last year (Score 1) 151

The prices of all the altcoins are tightly linked to the price of bitcoin. People speculate with digital currencies, but in the end they are usually trading altcoins for bitcoins which they can then turn into cash. So, when bitcoin went down, all the scrypt coins went down too, so GPU mining was less profitable. Then, a bunch of scrypt ASICs started appearing, making GPU mining less profitable. Bitcoin has been going up, but it's among promises of much higher hashrate Scrypt ASICs just on the horizon- so there's a steady stream of people that want to ditch GPU's.

Comment Re:Wasteful (Score 2) 48

TFA says the money was raised through a $250 million campaign. Donors WANT this. The parts are free, they just have to be found, and the museum just has to cover the shipping and paperwork costs. Doesn't sound wasteful to me, sounds like the obvious and worthwhile thing to do. Or would you prefer these parts to be sold wholesale for scrap?

Comment Re: Missing is the "why" here. (Score 4, Insightful) 48

You... don't really get "museums," do you? They're trying to preserve history. Are you really saying a museum shouldn't try to use the original historic parts when they're available, just because it's harder to acquire a few of them? Do you really think middle schoolers are the best metric to rate the value of a preservation effort?

Comment This sounds amazing (Score 1) 48

I never got to see a space shuttle launch, and it's one of those things that I'm going to regret forever. On the flip side, I've been able to get up-close and personal with 2 shuttles now, the Enterprise and the Discovery, thanks to the awesome displays in NYC and DC. Getting a chance to see the entire stack on display would just blow my mind, so I really hope this project comes to fruition. I'm probably going to make the trek to the west coast at some point to see the shuttle, but it'd be so much cooler to see the whole stack.

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